Schott et al. (2007) have shown that the “tragedy of the commons” can be overcome when individuals share their output equally in groups of optimal size and there is no communication. The assignment of individuals to groups as either strangers or partners does not significantly affect this...

Many economic environments are susceptible to either free-riding or overuse. Common pool resources (CPRs) fall in the latter category. Equally sharing the output of a CPR in partnerships introduces a free-riding incentive that may offset overuse. Socially optimal harvesting can be induced by...

We study cheap-talk communication in common pool resource environments with and without output-sharing groups. Communication in groups of 12 does not improve efficiency over the non-cooperative Nash outcome without communication. Organizing subjects into output-sharing groups of four players...

Schott et al. (2007) have shown that the “tragedy of the commons” can be overcome when individuals share their output equally in groups of optimal size and there is no communication. In this paper we investigate the impact of introducing communication groups that may or may not be linked to...